The Question of Fasting and a Call to Justice

Study notes

The delegation’s question about continuing the fifth-month fast receives no calendar answer. Instead the word that reaches Zechariah asks whether those seventy years of fasting and ordinary meals alike were ever offered to the LORD. By recalling the earlier prophets who spoke while Jerusalem and its districts still dwelt at ease, the oracle places the present community under the same demand for true judgment, kindness, and protection of the widow, orphan, sojourner, and afflicted. The account of past refusal, hardened hearts, and the resulting scattering and waste of the land therefore functions as the measure against which any renewed observance must now be tested.

What is The Question of Fasting and a Call to Justice about?

In the fourth year of King Darius, the fourth day of the ninth month, Chislev, Bethel-Sharezer and Regem-melech arrive in Jerusalem with their men. They come to entreat the face of the LORD by putting a question to the priests of the house of the LORD of Hosts and to the prophets who are there. Their question is straightforward: should they continue to weep and set themselves apart in the fifth month exactly as they have done for many years?

The inquiry reaches Zechariah after the temple has stood again for several years. The community still observes the fast that marks the burning of the first temple, yet the changed circumstances prompt them to ask whether the old observance should remain unchanged. The LORD's word that reaches Zechariah does not open with an answer about the calendar. It opens by asking whether those seventy years of fasting and mourning were ever directed toward the LORD, and whether the people's ordinary meals have been any different in their self-focus.

This exchange therefore sets the terms for everything that follows in the oracle. It moves the discussion from ritual habit to the deeper matter of whether the people's actions toward one another have matched the covenant they claim to keep.

Where does this passage sit in Zechariah?

Zechariah 7 opens after the final temple oracle of chapter 6, in which a crown is set on Joshua and the coming Branch is named. The arrival of Bethel-Sharezer and Regem-melech with their question about continued fasting therefore moves the book from symbolic action centered on leaders and structures to direct address of the whole people and their priests. The word that reaches Zechariah in 7:4 does not resolve the calendar question at once; instead it widens the frame by recalling the seventy years of fasting and by quoting the earlier prophets who spoke when Jerusalem still dwelt at ease.

That recollection in 7:7 links the present inquiry to the pre-exilic warnings that occupy the first half of the book only indirectly; the visions of chapters 1–6 have already shown the consequences of ignoring those warnings. The refusal described in 7:11–12, with its image of a shoulder turned in rebellion and ears made heavy, repeats the pattern that produced the scattering announced in 7:14. The land made waste becomes the negative counterpart to the measuring line and the return of exiles promised earlier.

The same chapter then turns, in verses 9–10, to the positive demand for true judgment and compassion toward the widow, orphan, sojourner, and afflicted. This ethical summons stands between the completed temple oracles and the restoration promises of chapter 8, where the fasts will become feasts. The movement shows that the rebuilt house alone does not settle the community’s life with God; the words once sent by the spirit through the earlier prophets must still be heard if the reversal from waste to dwelling is to hold.

How is the passage structured?

The inquiry reaches Zechariah on a precise date, the fourth day of Chislev in Darius’s fourth year, carried by Bethel-Sharezer, Regem-melech, and their companions. Their single question about the fifth-month fast is recorded in direct speech addressed to the priests and prophets. No answer follows at once. The next verse records a new divine word that redirects the issue away from the calendar and toward the people themselves.

That word poses two questions in succession. The first asks whether the fasts observed for seventy years in the fifth and seventh months were truly offered to the LORD. The second observes that ordinary eating and drinking likewise belong only to those who perform them. Only after these probes does the oracle reach back to the earlier prophets who spoke while Jerusalem and its surrounding districts still lived undisturbed.

A second divine word arrives without transition. It states what the LORD requires: true judgment and the practice of kindness and compassion between brothers, with explicit protection for the widow, orphan, sojourner, and afflicted. The narrative then turns to the earlier generation’s response. They refused to listen, offered a shoulder of rebellion, and made their ears heavy. Their hearts were set as flint against the instruction sent by the LORD’s spirit through the former prophets, and great wrath followed.

The closing verses draw the consequence in exact correspondence. Because they did not hear when called, the time will come when they call and receive no hearing. The scattering among nations they did not know and the reduction of the land to waste complete the movement from an unresolved question about fasting to an account of covenant refusal and its fixed outcome.

What is the historical background?

The date in the fourth year of Darius places the inquiry in Chislev of 518 BCE, roughly two years after the temple foundation had been laid again under Persian permission. Darius ruled a vast empire that included the province of Yehud, where local affairs such as temple construction and religious observance fell under imperial oversight yet were largely administered by Judean leaders. The men named Bethel-Sharezer and Regem-melech traveled from a settlement north of Jerusalem, a detail that shows how communities outside the capital still looked to the restored house of the LORD of Hosts for guidance on shared ritual questions.

Fasting and self-dedication in the fifth month had marked the anniversary of the temple’s destruction by Babylonian forces in 586 BCE. A parallel fast in the seventh month recalled the assassination of Gedaliah, the governor installed after the fall of the city. These observances had continued through the seventy years of exile and into the early years of return, functioning as acts of communal lament rather than state-mandated ceremonies. The question whether such fasts should persist once the temple stood again reflects a practical uncertainty: how long a ritual tied to loss remains fitting when circumstances have changed.

The earlier prophets mentioned in verse 7 spoke while Jerusalem and its surrounding districts—the Negeb to the south and the Shephelah foothills to the west—still enjoyed settled life. Their words, carried by the LORD’s spirit, addressed a population that assumed stability and therefore needed repeated calls to justice for the widow, orphan, sojourner, and afflicted. When those calls went unheeded, the same divine authority that once sent the prophets later scattered the people among nations previously unknown to them, leaving the land empty. The delegation’s arrival in Jerusalem thus occurs against a backdrop in which both the memory of exile and the reality of Persian-era restoration shape the community’s understanding of what counts as a fast offered to the LORD.

What does this passage teach about God?

The LORD’s question in the fifth and seventh months probes the direction of the people’s devotion rather than the calendar itself. When the fasts and the ordinary meals alike are performed without reference to the one who spoke through the earlier prophets, both become self-directed acts. The text presents God as one who measures worship by whether it reaches him, not by the intensity of the observance.

The same word that recalls the settled life of Jerusalem and its surrounding regions before the exile also recalls the message those prophets carried. That message centered on concrete dealings between persons: rendering judgment that corresponds to reality and extending kindness and compassion to a brother. The widow, the orphan, the sojourner, and the afflicted appear here as the specific test cases. Refusal to attend to them is portrayed as the active hardening of the heart, set like flint against the instruction sent by the LORD’s spirit.

The consequence follows the pattern already announced. Because the people turned a deaf ear, the LORD declares that their later cries will meet the same silence. The scattering among nations and the transformation of the land into a waste stand as the enacted form of that withheld response. The desirable land itself becomes evidence of the covenant broken from within.

What remains is a definition of covenant faithfulness that does not separate ritual from conduct. The fasts that once marked loss are now weighed against the ongoing requirement to protect the vulnerable and to refuse schemes that harm a neighbor. God’s earlier patience is acknowledged in the seventy years of continued warning; the present moment tests whether that patience has produced a different posture toward both worship and one another.

What are the interpretive difficulties?

The delegation’s question about weeping and setting themselves apart in the fifth month receives no calendar ruling. The word that reaches Zechariah instead asks whether the fasts kept across seventy years were offered to the LORD at all. This move leaves the original inquiry hanging. Readers cannot tell from the verses whether Bethel-Sharezer and Regem-melech hoped to end an observance now that the temple stood again or whether they sought assurance that their continued mourning still counted as service to God.

The same oracle recalls the message spoken by the earlier prophets while Jerusalem and the surrounding regions still lived at ease. Those prophets called for true judgment and for kindness shown to brother, widow, orphan, sojourner, and afflicted. The refusal recorded in verses eleven and twelve belongs to the generation that heard those prophets, yet the scattering and the waste of the land now stand before the present hearers. The text does not clarify how directly the returned community inherits the guilt of that earlier refusal or how far their own hearts remain hardened.

A further silence concerns the relation between the fasts and the ethical demands. The word moves from questioning the fasts to stating the requirement of justice without declaring whether the one replaces the other or whether both remain necessary. The passage therefore supplies no explicit guidance on whether the fifth-month observance should continue, change, or cease once the people begin to practice the justice the earlier prophets required.

Finally, the closing description of the land made desolate states that the people themselves turned a desirable land into waste. This claim sits alongside the assertion that the LORD scattered them. The verses do not resolve how these two statements fit together or whether the human action and the divine action describe the same event from different angles.

Notes accompany the Anselm Project Bible, an AI translation from the original languages. Tap any verse above for the committee's word-level decisions.